Thank you for a short but wonderful experience! Due to time constraints and other factors, the forum is now archived and is no longer open to new registrations nor posts. All existing content can be seen for the time being. Thanks again, and I wish everyone all the best!

Please note that the forum may be permanently removed in the future, so please save any content sooner rather than later. No advance notice of this action will occur.

I'm trying them in a world with some base GoG ones and two Hive Mind Ettins. So far, they seem... just as dumb as base GoG ones. Still, it was nice to bring a smile to a tortured Norn's face. I'll probably see more differences once I've played for more than 10-15 minutes with them.

I think that sibling instincts may occasionally make them inadvertedly prefer siblings; purely because they encourage both slapping one another (Kannova Venterra get less bored from slapping a sibling; the slapped sibling gets slightly less bored and sleepy, too, and it only hurts as much as a normal slap), and having lots of positive interaction (their boredom and loneliness lowers faster merely by a relative's proximity and they get extra benefits from being pet/tickled/kissed by siblings and parents, though with parents it always comes with lowered sex drive). So if your Norns are happy and not angry, and they managed to skip over the occasional bored slap, they may end up being attached to their siblings enough to prefer them for breeding. I already decided against blocking sex drive for siblings for engine limitation reasons as well as for the benefit of those who start from small populations like me.

So far, the second generation of Norns in my world is still just a bit too small to be sure. Most of one mother's hatched children ended up being males (and from the same male, too).

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!

Yup, no time like the present, so I started trying to improve on the breed.

But yes, it does seem correct that Norns were getting too many direct sources of rewards for things that would not actually satisfy their needs.I didn't want to rip off Akamai Cannies, especially given the fact my testing already proved not all things that work for Cannies will work for Kannovas and N. Subterras, so I've started making some changes geared towards improvement for my Norns. It'll take some time for me to give these to both variants and to produce eggs files, however.

- Several reward sources have been dampened to prevent (insert-number-of-hours) stupidity syndrome. I.E. The rewards for eating ANYTHING when hungry has been decreased compared to rewards for eating food and fruit when hungry. Reward for pushing objects when hungry has been decreased, but preserved to allow fruitful interactions with mushrooms, certain COBs, fruits, and dispensers.

- Creatures were more encouraged to pull than push things when bored (136 reward vs 139 reward); this has been reversed (141 reward vs 123 reward).

- Several instincts were completely remade, i.e. no longer do creatures get reward for pulling on ANYTHING when hungry. They specifically get a reward for getting (picking up) things from the food group when hungry.

- In general, new genetics will favor the 'push' action except in certain cases. Creatures will be encouraged to pull lifts and teleports when feeling overcrowded, for example. This will lead to them preferring to go down rather than up except when lonely or crowded. 'Rest' and 'eat' actions should also be chosen by Norns more frequently.

- A total of 18 new genes has been introduced. These mostly have to do with sleeping and eating instincts and stimuli, i.e. they encourage bored, sad Norns to push toys, discourage approaching other creatures when sleepy or pushing them when hungry, encourage eating roots, pushing/eating drinks, improve likelihood of sleeping, and promote usage of lifts and teleports if crowded or lonely. It also discourages dropping food when told to eat it and adds to fruit-eating instinct at later ages (this may be personal issue, but my Norns seemed to completely abandon fruit-eating at later ages).

I'll upload the breed genetics and eggs to a new folder when all the versions of the breed have been properly updated. Do note I won't have much time to test these changes, however, so completely overwriting the previous breed is not advised.

Also, this 'improved' breed may be less crossable with other breeds because of difference in the number of genes (those can lead to genetic deletions). I.E. Base Venterras have 835 genes, Altered Breed has 842, Altered Breed with these changes has 860 and Akamai Canny has 820.

Ps. By the way, did you know (Original and several improved) Norns have no way of associating the sleeping drive with the resting action outside of lifts? They rest when tired, but aren't particularly more inclined to rest when sleepy.

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!

New version comes with Frog and Golden Desert looks. For now, they're not different at all compared to the other Norns... do you guys feel like I should make the Golden Desert ones live longer and the Frog ones amphibious?

Be wary of overwriting your files, as the naming scheme is exactly the same (we're limited to 4 letters on gene and egg files, after all). You can also only download the frog and golden desert looks to avoid overwriting.

Please be aware version 2 was not tested and may have an unpredictable quirk of behavior in relation to how their new instincts interact with the Kannova brain. I wholeheartedly believe they should be smarter, but zero testing is zero testing. They're also slightly less viable to crossbreed with Cannies compared to the version 1 because of these thorough changes.

Should these alterations be viable and make the Norns smarter I'll try producing some sort of smartened Ettins and Grendels as well at some point, but for now my work is done.

Now I gotta figure out how I want to spread them to the world at large.

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!

So, I've had juuust a bit of time to test the breed and its crossability yesterday and today.The results are...- The new breed seem noticeably better at sleeping and actually staying asleep, at least in the case of the two test subjects.- They still travel quite a bit.- There doesn't seem to be a super-visible tendency to go down in lifts rather than up.- Their social abilities seem intact but they seem to occasionally break away from their issues to actually fall asleep or eat something, which is good. - They are not obsessed with teleports as I feared might be the case; in fact, they didn't use any at all.- They eat roots when hungry, which is nice.- They eat significantly more fruit than most of my Norns, but still identify 'food' as the primary source of anti-hunger when saying need.- They say need less than Version 1.

Please note the test subjects were still fairly young during the experiment.

I also finally managed to lay an egg through the Genetics kit. I chose a Flora Egg to test an Akamai Canny crossbreed viability and...It was dreadful.

I think I got a weird Flora Norn but is something wrong with them in people's experience? Mine kept obsessively going right no matter what I did, and the two crossbreeds respectively had over 1500 (vs 800+ for both creatures) genes and crashed the game, or just crashed the game during the hatching process.

I'll test regular Cannies and some other Akamai Canny breed for crossbreeding viability with version 2 later.

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!

Canny Norns are still crossbreeding fairly well with the current version of the breed; it's difficult to say if Akamai Cannies have some sort of a universal problem. I did experience game crashes from laying / hatching Akamai - Kannova Venterra hybrid eggs, but one hybrid was born successfully and healthily.

As these are regular Norns and don't have massive metabolic changes I'll upload the hybrid Norns obtained during testing to TCR today or tomorrow.

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!

- The newer version produces slightly more errors/faulty births, seemingly, when crossbred with regular Cannies. It's not very noticeable, and the fault may also lie on the side of the Canny breed I've been using (Bat Norns have a slightly altered metabolism). Overall, Kannova Venterra 2.0 are still very viable to crossbreed with regular Canny Norns.- Most Akamai Canny based genomes with modifications that I've tried crossbreeding with (Flora and Dewa to be precise) can't really produce Akamai Canny children; the child either hatches with a Kannova brain or not at all (usually crashing the game). This may be because of too many conflicting genes and very different gene placement with these slightly altered genomes.-However, when I reproduced Kannova Venterras with Ivrogne Norns (who have moderate biochemistry half-life and reaction changes, but no instinct changes and are Akamai Canny), all three children were born and two of them survived while having Akamai Canny brains.

Verdict :- Crossbreeding is still very viable with Cannies. Non-JayD Cannies particularly benefit as they can inherit anti wallbonk instincts from Kannova Venterra. There's a risk Kannova-brained children with JayD Cannies may have wallbonking issues because of how their brains work. Most children are born without bugs.- Crossbreeding with Akamai Cannies could be undertaken with something that is very similar in terms of genes to a base Akamai Canny genome, but even supposedly only slightly altered genomes appear to produce many, many errors and as such are not recommended. However, surviving offspring *has* been achieved with an Akamai Canny breed.

All children from the crossbreeding and general behavior test have been uploaded as proposed creatures for download on the Creatues Repository. Once/if the admin(s) approve of them, there will be 9 new baby Kannova Venterra crossbreeds available!

Kannova Venterra 2.0 seem to waste a lot less time on absolutely pointless actions, are usually in a better mood, seem to sleep well in low population densities even with Norns in vicinity, eat better, and lose intelligence slower than the previous verison of the breed. They're still not at an 'amazing' level i.e. there's some problem with their sleeping stymuli and they appear to be slightly inferior breeders now, but I'd say I managed to improve them.

One day, all the weird mutant Norns, Ettins, and Grendels shall make themselves an X-Albians movie.If you'd like to read a blog-style story of my Creatures playthroughs (including struggles with Creatures 2' "Smart" breeds [Canny, N. Subterra, Kannova], and my own genome) click Here!

If you'd like to check and download my work with the Kannova genome, click here!